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What goes around comes around

I've always been interested in the things that inspire writers of fiction. I'm not talking about that painful interview question 'Where do you get your ideas from?' which makes every writer cringe. That is silly indeed. But there are certainly things that point writers in certain directions over and above the output of their own creative juices.

I was inspired to think about this in a big way while re-reading, for a spot of summer light relief, one of the P. G. Wodehouse Jeeves books - to be precise, The Inimitable Jeeves. It struck me that consciously or unconsciously J. K. Rowling (notice a similarity in the authors' names?) must have been influenced by a pair of characters in this book.

Specifically there are twins, named Claude and Eustace, who are at college when we meet them. This pair are always up to mischief, either simply causing havoc or, if possible, running dubious schemes to make themselves cash. Does this sound at all familiar?

I don't know if Fred and George Weasley were a conscious hat tip to P. G. from J. K. or simply inspired by a session reading Wodehouse long before that was not directly remembered - but either way it is hard to believe that Claude and Eustace were not prototypes of the mischievous Hogwarts entrepreneurs.

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